Review – Cybersecurity and More in the FAA BVLOS NPRM

Last week when the FAA published their notice of proposed rulemaking on ‘Normalizing Unmanned Aircraft Systems Beyond Visual Line of Sight Operations” in the Federal Register, I had not intended to cover anything beyond the TSA portions of that rulemaking. While I do some coverage of uncrewed aircraft systems in this blog, the focus is more oriented toward counter UAS (cUAS) operations and protecting critical infrastructure from drone-based attacks. While researching yesterday’s post, however, I discovered that the FAA was being relatively proactive in including cybersecurity protection requirements in their portions of the NPRM. Additionally, there is proposed language that would make any rules authorizing counter UAS activities more difficult to craft. Finally, there is reference in this proposed rule to the pending rulemaking on identifying critical infrastructure where UAS operation would be prohibited.

The FAA is soliciting public comments on this NPRM. Comments may be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal (www.Regulations.gov; Docket #FAA-2025-1908). Comments should be submitted by October 6^th, 2025.

 

For more details about these provisions of this rulemaking, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/tsa-portion-of-faa-bvlos-nprm - subscription required.